COVID Debate Cheat Sheet: Trump Failed Americans on Coronavirus — His Mismanagement Has Created a Catastrophic Crisis

On the Numbers:

205,091 Deaths; 7,150,117 Cases

Infections Rising in 21 States; Hospitalizations Have Stopped Declining Nationwide; Coronavirus Now 2nd Highest Cause of Death

On Schools:

More Than 500k Kids in US Have Been Infected by Virus

More Than 130k Infections on College Campuses

On Vaccines:

Fauci Says Unlikely to Have Vaccine by Election Day

On China:

Trump Praised President Xi at Least 15 Times in January/February

Coronavirus Was Already in US by the Time the Ban Was Issued; More Than 40k Entered US in 2 Months After Ban Was Issued

On Personal Conduct:

Trump Downplayed Coronavirus 128 Times Since Pandemic Began

Trump Held 6 In-Door Rallies in February and March After Admitting the Virus Was Deadly

On PPE:

August Study Shows 68% of Nurses Asked to Reuse Masks, Respirators

Trump’s State Department Flew 18 Tons of PPE To China on February 7

On Discrediting Experts:

Trump Forced CDC to Weaken Testing Guidelines, School Reopening Guidelines & Reports to Conform With Admin Policy

On the Economy:

62 Million Filed for Unemployment; GDP Shrank 32.9% in 2nd Quarter; 1.4 Million Small Businesses Closed for Good Since March

On tonight’s debate stage, President Trump will no doubt employ his strategy of downplaying and denying the coronavirus pandemic — relegating the crisis to the rear view mirror even as cases rise and 205,000 Americans have lost their lives.

The virus never had to be this bad. But President Trump has spent the last seven months focused on saving his floundering re-election, rather than on saving American lives. As President Trump abdicates responsibility for this crisis on the debate stage, it’s important to recognize that the pandemic is just getting worse — and that the administration is doing nothing to stop it.

State of the Virus: As the US Passes 200,000 Coronavirus Deaths, Trends Are Going in the Wrong Direction

As of September 29, there were 205,091 confirmed deaths and 7,150,117 cases of COVID-19 in the United States. Despite making up only 4% of the world’s population, the United States has more than 20% of the world’s deaths and more than 20% of the world’s cases.
At least 21 states are currently reporting increased COVID-19 infections, the number of new cases in each at least 10% greater in the last week than the week before. Several states are also reporting spiking test positivity rates: North Dakota’s positive test rate has averaged 30% over the past seven days compared with 6% the week before, while South Dakota’s positivity rate has risen to 26% from 17% the previous week.
Coronavirus hospitalizations have stopped declining — and in some parts of the country, hospitalizations are once again on the rise. Midwestern states like Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota are reporting record numbers of patients hospitalized with the virus.
According to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), COVID-19 is now the third-leading cause of death in the United States. The IHME even predicts that another 150,000 American could lose their lives to the virus in the next three months. While the US is currently averaging around 765 per day, the IHME predicts that deaths might surge as high as 3,000 per day by late December.
CDC Director Robert Redfield reiterated that nearly 300 million Americans, or 90 percent of the population, are still susceptible to being infected by coronavirus.

Trump Has Downplayed the Threat of the Virus Throughout the Pandemic and Admitted on Tape That It Was “Always” His Intention to Do So

Trump says on tape that he knew how dangerous coronavirus was. On February 7, Trump told journalist Bob Woodward on tape that the virus was “deadly stuff”, airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly” than the Flu.
But Trump lied to the American people, downplaying the threat of the virus at least 128 times since the beginning of the pandemic. Including repeatedly saying, without evidence, that the virus would “just disappear.”
Trump told Woodward in March: “I wanted to always play it down… I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
Asked about 1000 Americans dying every day from coronavirus during an interview on August 4, Trump responded, “They are dying. That’s true. And you — it is what it is.”

Vaccines: Independent Experts Agree a Safe, Effective Vaccine by Election Day Is Unlikely as Trump Makes Empty Promises and Erodes Americans’ Faith in Science

Trump has repeatedly teased that a coronavirus vaccine will be ready by October — just in time for the Presidential election. But his own experts say that that’s unlikely.
- Dr. Anthony Fauci has said “It’s unlikely we’ll have a definitive answer” on vaccines by Nov. 3.
- Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the Chief Scientific Adviser to Operation Warp Speed has said: “There is a very, very low chance that the trials that are running as we speak could read before the end of October.”
- Both CDC Director Robert Redfield and testing czar Admiral Brett Giroir have said that a vaccine will not be widely available until mid-2021.
Americans are worried that Trump’s push for a vaccine by the election is political, and many are losing confidence in the safety of a vaccine if one is approved on Trump’s timeline. A new poll shows that 69 percent of Americans have no confidence in the President vouching for the safety of a coronavirus vaccine.
Experts say that the dwindling confidence among Americans in an eventual vaccine could have catastrophic consequences for the United States’ coronavirus recovery.
- NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins has said: “Those who are vaccine hesitant have had their hesitancy enhanced by a variety of things that are happening right now, particularly the unfortunate mix of science and politics… I don’t want to have us, a year from now, having a conversation about how we have in our hands the solution to the worst pandemic of more than 100 years, but we haven’t been able to actually convince people to take charge of it.”
- Dr. Anthony Fauci said: “If you have a vaccine that is highly effective and not enough people get vaccinated, you’re not going to realize the full, important effect of having a vaccine.”

Chaos in Schools: Trump Rush to Reopen K-12 Schools and Universities Has Sparked Outbreaks Across the Country

President Trump has repeatedly downplayed the danger of the virus to children and young people, despite telling Bob Woodward, “It’s not just old people, Bob… It’s not just old, older. Young people too — plenty of young people.” Still, President Trump has unilaterally pushed for schools to reopen for in-person instruction — even threatening to cut funding from those that refuse to do so.
But more than 500,000 children in the United States have been infected by COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, and at least 100 have died. And children have been found, by Trump’s CDC, no less, to be able to transmit the virus to others — including vulnerable populations. Young adults, meanwhile, have seeded infections among older groups. In the south, as cases surged over the summer, cases rose among those 60 and older just nine days after beginning to rise among those in their 20s and 30s.
So it’s no surprise that the reopening of K-12 schools and universities has already been catastrophic. While there’s no federal mechanism to monitor outbreaks among schools, one independent effort suggests that there are already more than 30,000 cases among staff and students from K-12 institutions. Meanwhile, more than 130,000 infections have emerged on college campuses.
A study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Indiana University, the University of Washington and Davidson College concluded that college reopenings led to 3000 new cases a day in the United States. Of 50 US counties with the highest rates of college students and populations of 50,000 people, 20 have consistently reported higher rates of new virus cases than their states as a whole since September 1.

Deflecting Blame to China: Trump Has Tried Repeatedly to Blame China for the Virus; Meanwhile, He Praised President Xi and Implemented a Useless Ban

During January and February, Trump repeatedly praised President Xi and the Chinese government’s response to the virus.
Trump’s China travel ban did not stop travel from the country. Between February 2, the day Trump issued the ban, and early April, more than 40,000 people entered the United States from China. Even before the ban was implemented, the virus was already spreading in the US. Later data confirmed that large outbreaks east coast most likely originated in Europe.
But Trump has nonetheless tried to blame China for the pandemic — and refused to accept responsibility for his failure to act. Trump was warned for months that the pandemic was dangerous, but he chose to do nothing.

Super Spreader Events: Trump Has Held Dangerous Rallies Throughout the Pandemic, Flouting Expert Guidance About Mask-Wearing and Social Distancing While Contributing to the Spread of the Virus

Trump held indoor six campaign rallies in February and March after he acknowledged on tape to journalist Bob Woodward that he knew the virus was airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly” than the Flu.
Trump held an indoor campaign rally in Tulsa Oklahoma on June 20 as the state was in the midst of a coronavirus surge. Three weeks later, the state was seeing a record number of new infections.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed mask wearing, downplayed its effectiveness in stopping the spread of the virus and refused to wear one for months. In May, Trump mocked and called a reporter politically correct for wearing a mask while asking a question at The White House.

Trump Failed to Ramp Up Testing: Months Into the Pandemic, Shortages Persist.

Trump failed to heed warnings that the United States needed to massively scale up testing in the beginning of the pandemic to contain the virus. Early on, the Trump administration declined to use the diagnostic tests offered by the World Health Organization, and then, when the CDC finally began its own testing regimen, the tests didn’t work and were restricted only to those who had been to China or who had had known exposure to the virus.
Trump then abdicated responsibility for testing — delegating it downward to state and local governments when experts agreed that the country needed a robust, centralized testing infrastructure. States were ultimately forced to compete for limited testing supplies, just as they had to compete for PPE. As cases surged, testing supply shortages inhibited states from effectively identifying and tracing cases. Trump refused to invoke the Defense Production Act to increase supplies of testing materials like swabs until April 19th, weeks after shortages were first reported.
Months into the pandemic, labs were still rationing tests and vying for limited materials. As cases surged in July, people were forced to wait hours to get a test and weeks for results — by which time the tests were rendered useless.
It’s now September, and the United States’ testing efforts are still hampered by limited supplies. Labs are beginning to run low on reagents — and hospitals are reverting to testing only the most “essential” patients for the virus. As flu season approaches, these shortages are expected to get worse: most flu tests rely on the same components and equipment as coronavirus tests.

PPE Shortages: Trump Failed to Secure Enough Personal Protective Equipment for Health Workers Who Are Still Being Forced to Reuse Masks 7 Months Into the Pandemic

Trump will undoubtedly claim that he acted swiftly to shore up the nation’s supply of protective equipment. The White House, just last month, released a report asserting that President Trump used the Defense Production Act eighty times throughout the pandemic to alleviate shortages. But that’s far from the truth.
The Trump Administration has used the Defense Production Act to address shortages only sparingly throughout the pandemic. In fact, much of the $1 billion that Congress allocated for the purchase of supplies through the DPA was instead shifted to military contractors.
As a result of Trump’s failure to act decisively on PPE shortages early in the pandemic, governors, hospitals and municipal health departments across the United States were forced to compete on the open market for limited resources — as prices soared. The Trump administration provided little help, as FEMA routinely sent damaged, expired, or otherwise useless PPE to states struggling to get the virus under control.
Although shortages are now far less acute, nurses and doctors continue to fear that, as cases rise, PPE shortages will return. And, seven months into the pandemic, nurses are still being forced to reuse N95 masks until they are broken or visibly dirty. An August Survey of 21,500 nurses showed that 68% of them are still asked to reuse respirators.
The persistent lack of PPE has had devastating consequences. Shortages of protective supplies can allow coronavirus to tear through medical facilities, jeopardizing both patients and care workers. As of September 23, Kaiser Health News and The Guardian were investigating the deaths of 1256 care workers who died on the frontlines.

Trump Has Routinely Ridiculed Scientists and Politicized Agencies Meant to Keep Americans Safe

- Trump and his allies have attempted to discredit experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci for warning Americans about the seriousness of the virus. In doing so, President Trump has pushed junk science, miracle cures, and fringe conspiracy theories. He has also lifted up discredited doctors like Stella Immanuel.
- Dr. Scott Atlas, President Trump’s latest addition to the coronavirus task force, has also been providing the President with coronavirus misinformation. CDC Director Redfield said of Atlas: “Everything he says is false.”
- Trump has neutered the CDC — and rattled public faith in a once-independent agency meant to keep us safe. From ordering the CDC to adjust testing guidelines to exclude people without symptoms (while Dr. Anthony Fauci was under anesthesia, no less), to strong-arming the agency into changing school reopening guidelines, to having his cronies like Michael Caputo and Paul Alexander change the reports of CDC scientists, Trump has attempted to retool the agency for political purposes.
Trump has also regularly bullied the Food and Drug Administration into doing his bidding. He had the FDA issue an Emergency Use Authorization for convalescent plasma against the advice of experts and he pushed the agency to issue an EUA for hydroxychloroquine (which it later had to revoke).

Economic Collapse: Trump’s Failure to Combat the Virus Is the Primary Reason That the US Is Now in a Prolonged Recession

Trump’s failure to get the virus under control is the primary reason why nearly 62 million Americans have been forced to file for unemployment since March. Another 824,000 people filed for unemployment last week as the economy continues to be in a recession.
Trump oversaw the greatest economic collapse in history. The United States’ gross domestic product shrank 32.9% in the second quarter of 2020, the worst economic downturn on record.
The Wall Street Journal reported that 1.4 small businesses have closed for good since March and that 4 million could close forever by the end of 2020.
Trump’s economic response to the pandemic has benefitted billionaires, banks, corporations, and his own donors, all while shutting out Americans desperate for a lifeline.
Four months after House Democrats passed the Heroes Act to provide relief for struggling Americans, Trump and Senate Republicans let benefits expire and have still failed to take up legislation that would support workers and small businesses. Senate Republicans are now trying to ram through a Supreme Court nominee, rather than helping millions of Americans in need.

Trump’s Coronavirus Failures Have Resulted in Racial and Ethnic Disparities Among Those Impacted by COVID-19.

Trump’s failure to contain the virus has disproportionately impacted Black people and people of color in the United States.
Nationwide, Black people are dying of coronavirus at 2.3 times the rates of white people. Hispanic or Latino people are dying at 1.5 times the rates of white people, as are American Indians/Alaska Natives. Hispanics and Latinos are dying from COVID-19 at rates higher than their share of state populations in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
Among children with COVID-19, Hispanic children are hospitalized at eight times the rate of white kids, and Black children are hospitalized at five times the rate of white kids. Black children are also more than four times as likely as white children to test positive for the virus, while Hispanic children are more than six times as likely as white children to test positive.

Trump Is Trying to Strip Americans of Access to Health Care During Pandemic as Covid Becomes a Pre-Existing Condition for 7 Million People

Some survivors of COVID-19 suffer from long term complications. Many have fatigue, myalgia, inflammation of the heart and brain, memory problems, fever, and more. Researchers haven’t ascertained how many people infected by COVID-19 become “long-haulers,” but with 7 million people infected in the United States, there are no doubt thousands, if not millions, suffering from lingering effects.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) prevents insurers from dropping those with pre-existing conditions. But on November 10, 2020 — one week after the election — the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in California v. Texas, a case that could overturn the ACA and allow insurers to discriminate against seven million people who have been infected by COVID-19. As President Trump claims victory over the virus, he is putting millions at risk by attempting to ram through a Supreme Court nominee who could overturn the ACA.